Online advertising utilizes the Internet and other networks to deliver marketing messages and attract customers. Examples of online advertising on the World Wide Web include contextual advertisements (ads) on search engine results pages, banner ads, Rich Media Ads, social network advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing. Such ads can be text-only or include multimedia content such as graphics, animation, and audio. For example, ads can be displayed to users on various computing devices.
Computing devices can include personal computers, workstations, desktop computers, and mobile devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Wireless mobile devices can communicate via a wireless network and access the Internet and other networks.
Example ads can be graphical or text-only ads that correspond to the keywords of an Internet search or to the content of the page on which the ad is shown. These ads share a similar context as the user's search query, and thus are more relevant to the user. For example, a search query for “flowers” might return an advertisement for a florist's website.
Unfortunately, the growth of online advertising has saturated consumer attention with an overwhelming number of online ads. This reduces an effectiveness of each displayed online ad, usually measured as a conversion rate. To improve conversion rates, advertisers are continuously attempting to improve relevancy of their ads. Ad relevance denotes how well a display ad meets the information need of the user.
Relevance can be improved by only display ads that are similar in context and topic to a user's information need. For example, a user's information needs can be deduced from a search query, a user history, user demographics and characteristics, and any other information known about the user. Online ads are well-suited for specific targeted advertising efforts because the online environment allows for a high level of personalization of displayed ads.
There is an advertising continuum for the extent to which an advertising campaign effectively targets an audience. For example, an ad on an award-winning prime time television show cuts a broad swath across demographics, age, and even language. The types of products that lend themselves to this type of advertising have general appeal to a wide audience. For example, advertising bath soap during a prime time showing of a popular sitcom is an example of this scatter-shot approach.
At the other extreme is advertising tailored to a specific customer or a small set of customers. For example, hand delivering a mailer for a product or service that one or a small number of customers is a tailored approach to advertising.
Thus, there is a need to provide improved targeted advertising on a mobile device.